I am the little engine that could

I meant to post this yesterday, but absolutely did not have time because I was preparing my first ever talk for Ignite and also had book club in the afternoon. Anyway, yesterday morning I got up early to go for a jog in my neighborhood. I have been doing this 3 mile route for a couple of months, I jog usually about 20ish minutes total, and walk some as well. Unfortunately, I only usually get to jog once every week or two because I go to the gym a lot and do other kinds of exercise, so my endurance doesn't get built up quite as fast. So my end of summer goal was to be able to jog the whole 3 miles, hills and all. It's a tough job for the last half of it because much of it is uphill, and these are not tiny hills. Yesterday I was feeling really good and I told myself at about the one mile point that I could jog the whole thing. I wasn't really sure, but the night before I had been talking with a lady and she said that jogging was about mind games-your mind keeps saying you can't do it or you're just gonna die, but you have to win the mind game and press on! So I decided that I was the little engine that could, and I would fully believe that I could do it. So I did it! I reached my end of summer goal on May 3rd! I jogged the entire thing, even the end part which is the biggest, steepest hill of all. It was an extremely slow jog up the last bit, but I did press on with everything I had. I finished in 32 minutes. I would like to thank Nikah and Megen for their inspiration.
Yesterday was also a big day for me because I spoke at Ignite for the first time. We are doing this series called Film Fest 2005: How Movies Saved My Soul!! Another of Megen's great creations. So each of the 4 of us have had to pick a film to screen and find the sacred in the secular film. Megen did a film called Endless Summer about life's great adventures, Dustin chose Chocolate and had great things to say about our relationships toward people and how we choose to live our lives. I chose the Goonies and talked about our search for treasure and what that treasure is, as well as what our eternal treasure is or should be. I gave the kids each a drawing of a treasure chest (Megen drew it for me because she is a much better artist than me) and told them that they were the chest and they had to write down what they fill their treasure chest or their lives with...what they valued, etc. And I shared the parables of hidden treasure from Matthew 13:44. I was fairly nervous about speaking, but it went okay. Not great, but okay. It's hard because all of the kids aren't listening and some are talking and stuff. And I felt like it was a little fragmented. But there is much time and room for improvement. While gathering info/researching the topic of searching for treasure, I found some interesting stuff. One thing I included was an article Megen had read on cnn.com about these 4 roofers in Mass. that had supposedly found "buried treasure" last week. The treasure was 1,800 bank notes dating something like 1899-1928 with a face value of $7,000, but were appraised at about $125,000. It turned out that the men hadn't actually found this hidden treasure in the backyard like they said, but had taken it from a barn that they were working on. They were arrested.
Another interesting thing I found was the legend of the Beale treasure. There's supposedly some buried treasure in Virginia. Many men have spent time and money searching, but no one has ever located it. Have I found my next adventure...?
I can't believe it's already May!! I'm going home to visit in like 5 weeks! I am so excited! This month will breeze by because it's the end of the year and so super busy!
Oh, Monday night I went to my first bbq of the year. It was at the Millisor's of course. It was good fun. The reason for the bbq was that we have a new girl in the community...Erika. She is 27 and is here for 6 months, interning with a guy from our church. She just finished her masters degree at Wheaton in Chicago. She's living practically next door to me for the next 6 weeks, and then she'll still be close but at another house. I'm so excited to have her here! That's about it for me now. Thanks for reading!